


...If The Fates Allow...

by drinkbloodlikewine, whiskeyandspite



Series: A Merry Little Christmas - A wwhiskeyandbloodd xmas special [3]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alcohol, Ancient Greece AU, Fondling, M/M, Pagan Festivals, Pagan Rituals, aionios verse, based some time in the engysis book, semi-public displays of affection, though no spoilers for later chapters, tipsy!will
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-25
Updated: 2014-12-25
Packaged: 2018-03-02 14:57:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,692
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2816282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drinkbloodlikewine/pseuds/drinkbloodlikewine, https://archiveofourown.org/users/whiskeyandspite/pseuds/whiskeyandspite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“Masked for all debaucheries,” Will reminds him, tone entirely too innocent for the words he’s saying.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>Hannibal snorts, but Will can feel his smile, see the glimpse of it through the maw of his mask, a creature with fangs bared, snarling. “What do you know of debaucheries?” he murmurs, slipping his finger through the boy’s belt to tug him back when he stumbles too far forward into the crowd. He reels Will back against him, arm comfortably across his shoulders as they walk.</i>
</p><p>A festival of wine and theatre, masks and debauchery...</p>
            </blockquote>





	...If The Fates Allow...

**Author's Note:**

  * For [WendigoDreaming](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WendigoDreaming/gifts).



> Part of the [Aionios](http://archiveofourown.org/series/178289) verse, and as our boys don't celebrate Christmas in the traditional how-we-know-it-now sense, we decided to do some digging into Greek and Neuri festivals that would be celebrated at the same time! Bottom notes for all descriptions and discoveries!

“A wonder we could hear the actors at all,” Hannibal murmurs, eyes bright already with wine as they spill out onto the street from the endless stairs of the theatre.

The better part of the day was spent watching the tragedies at play upon the stage, the music and the dancing, the satyr-story that ended it - all the audience raucously deep in their cups - with laughter and ribald jokes. Thousands of Athenians fill the streets around them now, the sky above long dark and filled with stars visible even beyond the brightness of the city’s countless torches that make the streets luminous around them.

Gathering his heavy chamlys against the cold, Hannibal watches as Will vanishes into the crowd, speedy little thing, and trudges after, steps heavy with wine.

“Look!” the boy exclaims. “Hannibal, oh - please!”

The merchant before Will turns a keen eye from the boy to Hannibal, sensing the resignation on the general’s face and smiling readily in anticipation. An artisan, selling cloth masks in mimic of those that the actors wore on their stage, and doing steady business from the intoxicated many so ready to spend their coin in celebration of the festival’s excess.

“One of a kind,” barks the merchant. “For only drachmas, let yourself be concealed in your debauchery! For Dionysus!”

“For Dionysus!” cry back all who hear the cheer, peals of laughter and delight. Another shout in exuberance for the god of the day comes from further down the streets, echoed again, and again, far into the city until for as far as they can hear, there are shouts and cheers.

“Can I please?” pleads Will, biting his lip as he grins, fingers caught in the thick wool of Hannibal’s robes. “For Dio-”

“Don’t,” Hannibal laughs, exasperated. “Don’t, I’ll be deafened by it. Choose one for yourself, and one for me.”

Ecstatic, Will does, only partially listening to the man as he directs him to one or another, choosing, in the end, one of a beast and one of a man, thanking Hannibal as he pays and holding to him as they make their way through the throng of the crowd. Will himself is entirely buzzed on the wine, more than he has ever been allowed to have at home, with Hannibal, and enough that the intoxicating pleasure grows almost addictive as he wants more of it.

“The masks, Hannibal, the music!” Will spreads his arms and dances, uncoordinated, for a few steps before falling into stride with the man again. In his boots, today, for ease of walking, his new tunic. “Oh, to be written about like that, to be the one to experience it all to write it!”

He delights in the cool evening air, presses close to Hannibal as the crowds grow thicker, staying just as close when they part. Where they’re going is difficult to say, the horses are near the market, tied and cared for, but too far away, and Will wouldn’t be able to find the right direction if he tried, now. They follow as the crowd goes, and Will presses against Hannibal, up on his toes to walk and speak into his ear.

“We could find more wine, the celebrations will last all night. I have seen them but I have never been, this is my first time, can you believe it?”

The masks he holds in a comfortable grip before pulling back enough when the crowd parts once more, in another ebb of people, and setting the one of the beast over Hannibal’s head with a grin, a delighted little laugh, before donning his own, tilting his head curiously as Hannibal takes him in.

“Masked for all debaucheries,” Will reminds him, tone entirely too innocent for the words he’s saying.

Hannibal snorts, but Will can feel his smile, see the glimpse of it through the maw of his mask, a creature with fangs bared, snarling. “What do you know of debaucheries?” he murmurs, slipping his finger through the boy’s belt to tug him back when he stumbles too far forward into the crowd. He reels Will back against him, arm comfortably across his shoulders as they walk.

Though memories of his own festivals play distant in his thoughts, in truth, it’s one of Hannibal’s favorite times in Athens. He has never failed to be grudgingly impressed by how willing the clever people of Attica are to throw themselves headlong into krateres of wine when the occasion calls for it.

And during the Dionysia, there is no greater call.

He had asked, once, during his first Dionysia what the reason was for such celebration and chaos as this, and one of his new brothers-in-arms had clapped him on the shoulder and laughed - what better way to thank the gods for all the wine than to drink as much of it as possible?

“To wine, then,” Hannibal decides, “though yours more water, than.”

Will whines, eyes up at Hannibal through the mask as he pouts. "Can I not drink it like you? I am no longer the child you brought with you through the city, I can drink as a man does."

Hannibal considers the unsteady walk, the energy vibrating through his boy. He will not make him train in the morning, he himself will not be able to wake to make him, but he threatens the boy with it regardless, finding Will uncaring.

"I will be skillful," the boy proclaims. "I will not call for mercy." The declaration is entirely youthful and sweet, ignorant and prideful, and Hannibal wonders if Will would even be able to lift a goblet after his next, let alone a sword the very next morning. So, amused, Hannibal gestures for Will to get them wine, following the lead of many and settling in a wide field by the theatre to wait.

Will finds the selection seemingly endless, some flavored with fruits and spices, others aged and claimed to be the most delicious. He decides on that, in the end, and takes two large cups back to Hannibal, presenting them with a flourish before dropping to his bottom heavily with a laugh, and bringing a hand up to adjust his mask.

"Always your cup bearer," he says, lifting the mask enough to drink half of the cup in one long drink, a hiccup catching him at the end.

It is strong enough wine - not much water mixed within - for even Hannibal to hum upon tasting it. He regards his little miscreant at length, mask skewed across his brow, and lifts his own in kind to better regard the languid lines of his legs as they stretch across the cool grass.

Around them, Athens is uproarious, all classes of people interacting freely, masked and not, drunk and very drunk. Laughter and shrieks, cheers to their wine-soaked god breaking out among the throngs, and sprawled across the grasses, there are greater debaucheries already at hand as night pulls down cold around them and each seeks warmth in their own way.

As Will does, now, wine only just missing his chiton as it sloshes over the edge of the cup, and he leans into Hannibal, seeking his mouth and finding only his cheek.

“You are a disgrace,” Hannibal tells him warmly, sliding up a hand to snare his eromenos gently by the hair and tilt him back to hear the laugh that breaks free from him.

Will bites his lip, mask still askew, and grins, shifting to rest on all fours if he is not permitted closer.

"I am _worshiping_ ,” he corrects, entirely too amused by the idea as Hannibal's hand slips through his hair and to his face, running a thumb over wine-stained lips. Around them, more calls and joyful exclamations, some repeating lines from the tragedies in a drunken inaccurate rendition. Will wriggles his hips and crawls closer, removing his mask and taking Hannibal's from him.

"It seems I have seen you wrongly," he comments, putting Hannibal's mask on himself, his own on Hannibal, Will the beast, now, he the man. Will bares his teeth and growls in what Hannibal supposes the boy thinks to be a fierce and frightening way before he giggles and brings his cup to his lips again, nearly choking on it.

"Did you not worship in the winter?" he asks, genuinely interested as he settles with thighs splayed onto the grass, hands between to balance him, holding down the edge of his tunic to keep some semblance of dignity.

Hannibal is unable - or unwilling - to stop his gaze from drifting downwards to where the boy’s fingers spread between his legs, body arched forward. Wolven, Hannibal considers, and it pulls at something familiar and fierce inside of him.

“We did,” Hannibal responds, a brief tightness alongside his eyes at the past tense of the words, and emboldened by wine, he allows himself to feel as if it may not be the most accurate description. “We do.”

“How?” asks the boy, scooting closer, and Hannibal swallows back a mouthful of the heady wine.

“The alcohol is universal, it seems,” Hannibal tells him, “but much more beer for us, than wine. To celebrate a good harvest, a good year now passed, and to pray for the next to be better still.”

“That sounds the same,” grins Will, before biting his bottom lip.

With a hum, Hannibal sets his cup just aside and leans back onto his elbows, stretching his legs - aching from sitting on the amphitheatre steps for so long - onto the grass. “We celebrate the death of the old god when the sun grows dim and the world is dark, and await the birth of the new, who brings with him spring, again.”

“This is much more exciting, then,” states the boy, although it’s half a question, and enough to pull a brusque laugh from the man at his side.

“When your people turn to animals - wolves, howling song in the darkness - to welcome back the dead to walk in the cold months,” Hannibal murmurs darkly, “when you hear the screaming of livestock sacrificed to bonfires that your little torches are but matches beside, then speak to me of excitement.”

Will’s eyes are wide behind the mask, lips parted before the bottom one is drawn into his mouth again and he pushes himself to crawl closer still, one leg between Hannibal’s own, the other on the other side of it, straddling his thigh, poised just before the man’s knee.

“To wolves?” Will asks quietly, fascinated, the wine in his cup is gone, sipped as Hannibal had spoken, now it lies tipped onto the grass, the last drops trickling to the earth beneath. “Truly, to wolves?”

“I have seen it,” Hannibal confirms, watches with a brief quirk of his lips as Will moves closer still, he can feel the heat of the boy against his own thigh where Will had spread himself. Soft, he knows, vulnerable and sensitive when touched, and right now entirely wanton and unknowing of it. Perhaps that, in the end, is what makes him entirely too appealing, that Will truly does not know the picture he paints - the temptation he offers.

“Would that I could,” Will says, smiling wide, “I would run the plains and swim the seas. Stalk the forests and howl.” A laugh, then, gentle and young. “I would be a frightening beast.”

“A terror,” Hannibal confirms, pushing back the boy’s mask to wrap his fingers around the back of his head and tug him near enough to kiss. Lips sliding smooth together, Hannibal allows a soft, vocal sigh to pass between them. It is the kind of tenderness that would draw looks, if not comments outright if done on any other day, but here there are few enough who care, and with wine as their shield, Hannibal does not bother himself with concerns of propriety.

As Will slinks forward across his leg, chiton brushing Hannibal’s thigh but no more touch than that, Hannibal removes the mask from atop his head and drops it aside. He props himself up on his hand and lifts the other, to trail his fingertips up the boy’s chest.

“You would strike fear into the hearts of all who heard your howls,” Hannibal murmurs. “Send sheep scattering for their folds, mothers to snare their children and bring them safely inside. The earth itself would tear beneath your feet, the sky would split for your voice.” He draws a breath, sharp, as Will bites his lip and ducks his head, fingers curling into the grass on either side of Hannibal’s thigh. “Your ancestors would favor you,” Hannibal tells him, raising his hand to bring the backs of his fingers softly against Will’s cheek, “and run with you during those dark nights.”

Will’s grin is infectious, childish and bright, and his nose is pink at the tip from the wine, the apples of his cheeks the same. He looks so little this way, entirely trusting and warm, and he sways a little when he moves closer still, slinking over Hannibal now until they brush skin to skin, Will shivering almost violently with the sensation as a little gasp escapes him.

“I would run like the wind,” he adds softly, eyes hooded and bright, up to Hannibal now, feeling his fingers skim over Will’s warm skin that grows darker flushes as his thighs spread slightly further and he arches his back. He lifts his toes from the grass and sets them down again, in his boots. “Go so fast no one would catch me,” he grins, wide, bright, “not even you.”

Without another word, without warning, Will jerks back as though to run, to prove his wolfishness to Hannibal immediately. But he finds himself stumbling, feet tangled beneath himself as he feels strong arms reach and snare him back, and with a shrieking laugh, he goes, pressed back against Hannibal as the man curves over him, his feet against the insides of Will’s to keep the boy’s spread.

Again, Will shivers, bites his lip, turns his head to watch Hannibal as the man holds him, tight and protective and hungry. Will feels his tunic shift gently against his skin, ruched up a little as he had been snared, and shivers at the feeling of the cool air against his thighs.

"I will always catch you," Hannibal assures him, hand running rough over the boy's leather-bound calf, higher still up the outside of his thigh. "No matter how fast or far you run, I will find you and bring you close against me again."

Hannibal's hand circles over a narrow hip, around to trace the trembling muscles of his inner thigh. No higher, here, despite the debauchery unraveling wild and untamed around them, but he curls his nails and scrapes softly to pull another sweet laugh, dizzy and drunk, from the boy held beneath him on slender hands and knobby knees.

"I have turned before," Hannibal purrs against his ear. "Driven by darkness and desire, by moon and madness, made into an animal other than myself. I have felt fur across my skin, firs lash my legs, my teeth rend flesh. But you," Hannibal laughs, low, his breath thick with wine, "a far more perfect prey to offer to the gods that they might return the sun to us."

Will squirms, draws up his knee a little, sets it down again, a restless little thing in Hannibal’s arms.

“You would sacrifice me?” he asks, eyes down as Hannibal’s hand slips a little further up his thigh, fingertips beneath his tunic now. It’s dark enough, here, that it won’t matter who sees, considering the rest of the crowd around them, still yelling, still calling and drinking wine that Will feels heat his blood and bones and soul itself.

“I would run you down, turn you into a wolf for myself,” Hannibal purrs against him, a dark promise as Will bites his lip and presses his legs together at the knees, feet splayed, as Hannibal walks his fingers closer and closer to the warmest part of him, Will’s lips parted wide and brows up in nervous anticipation as Hannibal just skims against him, a tickling that arches Will’s back and shifts him further back against Hannibal’s chest.

“I would bring the sun,” Will tells him proudly, shivering again and turning to look at Hannibal as the man’s fingers firmly part his thighs. He swallows, stays as he is held, as Hannibal cups him with a rough palm and rubs against Will enough to make him moan.

Though there are, perhaps, calls and cheers for them among the rabble, Hannibal does not pay it notice, not with Will’s soft length growing harder beneath his fingers, stiffening with every squeeze of his fingers around it, with every unconscious rocking of Will’s hips downward against his calloused palm. This, to Hannibal, is the sensation of spring unfurling, wild and young and free, the promise of warmth and life resplendent and coaxed to being by his gentle guidance. A fitting exaltation for the holiday, to seek out the heat within each other when the wind bears cold against them and the days grow so short, a tribute to the god that Athens worships as a whole living breathing entity, to in their revelry bring life to the death of winter.

“You are the sun,” Hannibal breathes against Will’s bared shoulder where his cloak has fallen unheeded from him. His lips trace across broadening muscles, still new but growing daily, to the back of Will’s neck where he breathes in the smell of fragrant oil still upon his golden skin and the sweet scent of the boy himself beneath it.

“And so perhaps instead of bringing that,” he murmurs, voice rumbling low in his chest against Will’s back, “you will bring more wine instead.” A grin parts the general’s lips on a rough laugh, as he uncurls from over the boy and drags him backwards into the grass, spread upon his back with the boy atop him.

Will yelps, laughing as he’s positioned, and wriggles until he can straddle Hannibal properly, arms crossed on his chest despite the protest that follows.

“You claimed you drank beer at your rituals, I will not bring you more wine.” It seems to him, in that moment, the most clever denial he has ever thought up, and Will grins in triumph from his place atop Hannibal. It lasts long enough for the general to set his hands against Will’s backside and press him down against his own hardening length, and then Will makes that sweet little moan again and shivers.

“My cup-bearer has revolted against me,” laments Hannibal, bringing up a hand to push the boy’s wild hair back from his face and regard him properly, even as his eyes hood with the feel of Will’s hips twisting against him, again and again.

“You will turn me someday?” Will asks, setting his knees to the grass and his toes digging into it to help as he rocks against Hannibal now. “Into a wolf?”

It seems a more serious question than perhaps Will had intended, consideration drawing Hannibal’s brows in just a little. He remembers, in flashes of memory like the shadows and light of a bonfire, his first turning, when he felt himself lost to freedom and instinct. He remembers the weight of the pelt freeing him from the weight of the world, and how it never seemed the same after.

Turning his fingers beneath Will’s chin, he raises the boy’s eyes to his own, the same touch with which he greets the boy every morning in bringing Will’s mouth to his own.

“It is not my decision to make,” Hannibal confesses, laughing again as Will twists his head away with an impudent toss of his hair and bites his lip, rutting down harder against him. “It is in the hands of the gods,” he insists, voice tilting into a deep groan as their hardened lengths brush, and Hannibal promises, “but I will show you the way to them, if you wish it.”

Will sits astride Hannibal as he would a horse and grins, hands flat against his stomach.

“Yes,” he declares, and his smile is so genuine, so bright, despite the wine in his blood. He looks entirely debauched already and yet still rocking his hips with Hannibal’s before he turns his head, hair curled and barely contained in the little tail at the base of his neck, and suddenly seems to decide that he will, in fact, get wine, but for himself.

He manages to unseat himself only to be caught by the ankle, dragged back and pinned to the grass instead, thin legs curling around Hannibal’s thighs where he kneels over him, eyes bright and wide and dark all at once. This is the perfect festival, at the perfect time, and Will thinks of how he had seen the lights as a small boy, had asked his father if he could go and had been told that he would have to earn it, that until then, he would celebrate it as a boy, at home.

He feels like he has earned something. His grin widens and he makes a soft lilting little noise of a laugh.

“Like one of your stories,” Hannibal murmurs, lips closing down the boy’s neck to where it curves into his shoulder, fingers slipping the chiton so that his kisses can follow it. “The boy who became a wolf.”

Propping himself onto an elbow, Hannibal reaches back to squeeze Will’s thigh, bare skin soft and cold from the night air. He brings it higher around himself, holds Will’s leg wrapped around his waist, and ruts languid and wine-slow against him.

Though it is all for the celebration of a god still foreign to Hannibal, the sentiment of the festival is familiar enough, and the man cannot imagine a more appropriate way to spend it. Dizzy with wine and intoxicated by Will’s sweet sounds and reddened lips, erastes and eromenos, the old giving itself over to the new. A rhythm they now mark with their bodies against the earth, the grass scattered across with countless others seeking warmth against the winter chill.

**Author's Note:**

> Because we are such huge research nerds that we can't help ourselves, here's extra reading about the ancient Greek festival of [Dionysia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dionysia). For Hannibal's experience with winter solstice rituals, there isn't much about the [Neuri](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuri) people that's ever really been written, being like so many cultures of the period that were oral rather than literary. So we drew heavily from [Koliada](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koliada#Origins)/[Koleda](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serbian_Christmas_traditions#Koleda) as well as Charles Freger's excellent photo series of pagan-derived practices in Eastern Europe, [Wilder Mann](http://www.charlesfreger.com/portfolio/wilder-mann/).


End file.
